MIGRATION: Networks Smuggle Cubans to U.S. via Mexico

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Apr 13 2006 (IPS) - People smugglers are doing brisk business smuggling Cubans into Mexico and on to the United States. Between September 2005 and last February alone, 1,243 Cubans were detained in Mexico’s Caribbean coastal region.

Evidence of people smuggling rings, which has given rise to trials in Mexico and Cuba, is a new source of tension in the already severely deteriorated relations between the two countries.

For payments of between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars, the people smugglers pick up Cubans in Cuba or at sea and take them to different locations in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. From there they are taken by boat or land to the United States, for an extra fee.

Three Mexicans arrested off the Cuban coast in May 2005 went on trial Wednesday in Cuba, where public prosecutors are seeking 10 year sentences for the three men on people smuggling charges.

The Mexicans, who claim to be fishermen, are being defended by a legal practice paid by their government. The defendants, who say the accusations are unfounded, were arrested when their boat engine failed.

A verdict is expected in two months at the latest.

The Mexican administration of President Vicente Fox, which has sent the Cuban government several diplomatic notes over the last few months urging decent treatment for the three Mexican suspects, says it is following the case closely in order to prevent any miscarriage of justice.

Last August, Cuban President Fidel Castro denounced a supposed people smuggling ring financed by the anti-Castro exile community in Miami, which he said landed Cuban migrants on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, before taking them to the United States.

According to Castro, the network is tolerated by authorities in both Mexico and the United States.

Mexico, which shares a 3,200-km border with the United States, refutes the allegation, and insists that it rigorously cracks down on people smugglers.

During the Fox administration, which began in December 2000 and ends next December, Mexico has had several harsh run-ins with Cuba.

In 2004, the Mexican government accused Cuba of meddling in its internal affairs and reduced diplomatic relations to the level of charges d’affaires, after several clashes – a sharp contrast with the strong ties that Mexico has traditionally maintained with Cuba’s socialist government.

Pedro Ramírez, the head federal prosecutor in Quintana Roo, where the world-famous resort city, Cancún, is located, said Tuesday that the arrival of Cuban migrants on the shores of the state “is becoming a constant thing.”

The prosecutor explained that even though the boats in which the Cubans are intercepted appear to be adrift, many of the “rafters” do not show the typical signs of being stranded at sea, such as dehydration.

Ramírez said this indicated that they had been brought over by people smugglers.

However, there is evidence that many do arrive by accident, because on a number of occasions Cubans in a poor physical state, adrift in small boats, have been rescued at sea.

In one of the latest such incidents, the Mexican Navy reported on Apr. 4 that it had detained 24 Cubans who landed on a beach on Isla Mujeres, an island near Cancún, in two precarious vessels.

Based on statistics from the National Migration Institute, the public prosecutor’s office reported that 1,243 Cubans were detained between September 2005 and February 2006 in Mexico’s Caribbean coastal region.

“Everything would seem to indicate that besides the Cubans who reach Mexico by accident, there are also smuggling networks that are paid to bring them here, because there is no other way to explain why they arrive in such good physical condition, and in such large numbers,” Sam Gómez, an expert on migration issues, told IPS.

In June 2005, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested several Cuban-Americans and others in the state of Quintana Roo, on charges of people smuggling.

The authorities reported that the detainees had brought hundreds of undocumented Cubans into Mexico between 1998 and 2005.

The top port official in Quintana Roo, Víctor Martínez, said the suspects arrested by the FBI, who are being tried in Mexico, charged Cubans between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars to reach Mexico, and an additional sum of up to 7,000 dollars to continue on to the United States.

The flow of Cubans attempting to make it to the United States is steady. According to Havana, the phenomenon is fomented by the U.S. government. But Washington insists that Cubans are merely fleeing political and social oppression.

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cubans are eligible to apply for residency one year and one day after they set foot on U.S. soil.

The Cuban government complains that the U.S. law violates the migration accords signed by the two countries in 1994 and 1995. Under the agreements, any Cubans intercepted at sea by the U.S. authorities must be returned to Cuba.

The U.S. Coast Guard reported that in the fiscal year of October 2004 to September 2005, it intercepted 2,712 Cubans at sea, more than double the 1,225 who were intercepted in the previous fiscal year.